“And small blame to you, my dear!” agreed Miss Belcher; “only, you see, when folks go about killing one another, the hallucination begins to look disastrously as if there were something in it.”

“Yet I still fail to see,” urged Plinny, “why our dear Major should have fallen a victim.”

“It’s plain as a pikestaff, if you’ll excuse me,” Mr. Rogers answered her.  “This Coffin carried the chart on him, meaning to deliver it into the Major’s keeping.  He came here, entered the garden by the side-gate, found the Major in the summer-house, told his story, handed over the chart, and was making his way back to the high-road through the plantation, when he came full on this man Aaron Glass, who had tracked him all the way from St. Mawes.  Glass fell on him, murdered him, rifled his pockets, and, finding nothing—­but having some hint, perhaps—­pursued his way to the garden here.  There in the summer-house he found the Major, who meanwhile had fetched his cashbox from the house and locked the chart up in it.  What followed, any one can guess.”

“Not a bad theory, Jack!” murmured Miss Belcher, still drumming softly on the table.  “Indeed, ’tis the only explanation, but for one or two things against it.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, I don’t see why the Major should want to go to the house and bring back his cashbox to the garden.  Surely the simple thing was to take the paper, or whatever it was, straight to the house, lock it up, and leave the cashbox in its usual place?  I don’t see, either, what that box was doing, later on, in the brook below my lodge-gate; for, by every chance that I can reckon, the murderer—­ supposing him to be this man Glass—­would have pushed on in haste for Plymouth, whereas my lodge-gate lies half a mile in the opposite direction.”

“Are those all your objections?” asked Mr. Rogers.  “Because, if so, I must say they don’t amount to much.”

“They don’t amount to much,” Miss Belcher agreed, “but they don’t, on the other hand, quite cover all my doubts.  However, there’s less doubt, luckily, about the next step to be taken.  You send Hosken or some one to Torpoint Ferry to inquire what strangers have crossed for Plymouth during these forty-eight hours.  You meanwhile borrow my roan filly—­your own mare is dead-beat—­clap her in the tilbury, and off you go to St. Mawes, and find out how this man Glass got hold of a change of clothes.  Take Mr. Goodfellow with you, and while you are playing detective at St. Mawes, he can cross over to Falmouth and fetch along the corner cupboard.  Harry has the key, and we’ll open it here and read what the captain has to say in this famous roll of paper.  It won’t do more than tantalize us, I very much fear, seeing that the chart has disappeared, and likely enough for ever.”

But it had not.

It so happened that while I stood by my father’s bedside that morning I had noticed a flag, rolled in a bundle and laid upon the chest of drawers beside his dressing-table.  I concluded at once that Plinny had fetched it from the summer-house to spread over his coffin.